thumbsucker. most people go through an initial coming of age period in their teens. they experiment with who they want to be, they try to shed or tinker with old images of themselves, they choose or reject things, they go out of their way to find out who they really are -- or at least, an acceptable version of who they are. most of my favorite movies/television shows revolve around this theme, this discovering of oneself.

i love these fictional creations not because i can relate to any of it, but because of the opposite; i can't relate to the characters' plights at all. i feel like i missed my first coming of age period, or i was too ignorant of what was going on to really give any coherent thought to the subject. if coming of ages were like birthdays, i feel like i missed the first nine because nobody told me about the concept of birthdays.

i never brooded, experimented, consciously adapted, or had the prescence of mind to want to be anything in particular. i just was. i felt normal, i felt typical, i felt like i fit in wherever i was. of course, in retrospect, i don't think it was really a matter of fitting in as much as a total inability to realize that the activities and distractions i enjoyed weren't always exactly in lockstep with the majority's. not everyone played the tmnt rpg during lunch hour? what?

and it's not even about being a total dork in school -- since my school's class sizes were so small that social class barriers were hardly impenetrable -- but just about feeling like i might be different. at that age, i never felt different. i never felt like i wanted to be someone else. i never consciously wanted to change anything about myself. i wasn't proud or ashamed of who i was. i just kind of went where i went, like a weed. i can't even really describe what i might have been like at that age. no accurate adjectives come to mind. i just don't really know.

nowadays, i often feel like i was "cheated" out of a teenager-hood. any memories of angst, transformation, or self consciousness doesn't exist from that time period. it's like a big blank. when i have to think about "how am i the way i am," and what life experiences might have shaped that, i come up empty headed. i feel like having a twin sister traveling alongside me should be helpful in discerning what i was like as a teen, but i made so much fun of her when we were younger that i'm sure all she remembers is me being mean.

where is my reservoir of teenage emotion and confusion? or at least a clarity of vision about why i didn't have to suffer through any of that. how can i create coming of age stories when i don't have any personal experiences with it? unfair i say, totally unfair.